November 2009 Archives
When it comes to speed,
some would give the Coast Starlight a black mark. I maintain, it's the black
eye you have to watch out for, the train's speed being so, well, complex. One
could say the speed carries considerable baggage, but metaphorical and literal
reality get so badly jumbled en route to Seattle from San Jose, that one should
probably say something else. Such as, speed is relative. So bring your
relatives, at least three. And hang on tight.
The first time I took the
overnight train to Seattle, it was 1996, I was younger and more desperate and
more foolish. All of which conspired to create a marvelous adventure. The
train's 9 PM departure was delayed for unstated reasons until 3 AM, which made
the approach of the rotating headlight and the arrival of the tireless Amtrak
crew all the more dramatic, even inexplicable.
Time passes. Things
happen. Every cell in the body gets renewed every seven years, someone told me.
Which means that mine have gone through recycling, or renewing, twice since my
virgin Amtrak trip. Which says something, and I'm not sure what.
I don't know what Victor
thought of last week's trip. Victor is 13 years old, indefatigably active and
apparently cheerful, if somewhat over-the-top when it comes to persistence. He
had a rough childhood until lucking out in the form of my cousin David and wife
Terri who adopted him several years ago. I have adopted him myself, in a manner
of speaking. For his intensity seems natural to me, as do his childhood
problems. So what better thing to do then take him aboard the train? David and
I seemed to be in perfect agreement on this point. My brother had never seen
the Upper Willamette River Gorge by rail, making him deeply spiritually in need
of the journey. As I say, bring your relatives.
What's relative about the
speed of the Coast Starlight is too relative for words. In fact, you need to
study and re-study physics to get the hang of it. For every meter that the
train travels north, it also feints several centimeters west and east, while
catapulting a few skywards. Some would say this is because the Amtrak trains
follow in the wake of the freight variety. That rail cars carrying goods and
those carrying people cannot wisely share the same track. Because tons of
bauxite, iron ore, new Toyotas, and old rubbish destined for the landfill have
a way of pounding the hell out of the roadbed. Which gives the once-a-day Coast
Starlight quite a drubbing, north and southbound.
Whatever. I am a big boy.
Or a tough old guy. Or some combination of the two. And it's hard for me to
take anything but delight in watching the Siskiyou Range lose control of
itself, tumble away, and open its geological maw to a couple of hundred
tourists. There was plenty of snow, the fir trees were flocked with white as
though directed by Macy's and the single Union Pacific track hung off the
canyon edge as it always had. I spent my entire day sitting in the Parlor Car,
enjoying the views.
Victor, I should have
predicted, wasn't much for views. In truth, most kids aren't. His father had
prepared for this reality with games and distractions. But it takes an awful
lot to distract and occupy Victor. I was conscious of him passing behind me
every few minutes. That is to say, conscious when I was conscious. The train's
jolting never does much for a night's sleep, so in between scenic high points
in the lounge car, I propped my foot against the wall and slept.
'That man is mean,' Victor
told me in midafternoon. He was pointing at a man in a hard cap. I told him
that man was the conductor. Victor could have cared less. He wasn't doing
anything, he told me. Just walking. Back and forth, the entire length of the
train, doubtless talking to people in his gregarious way, until the conductor suggested
he hang out in the Parlor Car. Hanging out is simply not Victor's thing.
Fortunately, there were meals at regular intervals. And David and Victor called
an early halt to the trip at Olympia, Washington, their destination. We said
goodbye. And my brother and I set out for our compartment.
I hadn't been there since
the a.m. Might as well make the journey
as I had done in the morning, all in one go. Of course, there had been a major
difference. The morning's trip took place while the train made a protracted
stop in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The Coast Starlight has been so bullied into
lateness by freight trains for so long that Amtrak has given up and built
considerable padding into the schedule. Which explains why we had pulled into
Klamath Falls almost one hour early.
But nothing explains the
difference between walking the Starlight's corridors and climbing its stairs
when the train is stopped, versus when it is moving. Although a good dose of
LSD might approximate the latter. When the Starlight is on the move, it is on
the move in all directions. Things jolt up and down, tilt left, lurch right,
careen around corners, thud and shake. For a quadriplegic who can barely get
his neuromuscular bearings at the best of times, the train's motions come like
enemy artillery. They are uncertain, threatening and unnerving.
Which made the end-of-day
trip through the bouncing cars doubly exhausting. Actually, I was tired by the
time I got to the end of the Parlor Car. The car coupling, where metal plates
shift and jump, required some extraordinary fancy footwork, not to mention a
leap of faith. Then it was down one sleeping car hallway, through the center
vestibule and down the next. To another coupling. I was breathing heavily and
wondering why the train had gotten so hot.
It was that anarchic part
of the journey when sleeping compartments have mostly emptied out and are there
for the taking. I could've stretched out in any number of empty rooms. But I
have my pride, if that is the word for it. I couldn't quite give up. So I
pressed on, even though my paralyzed right leg was showing signs of stress. The
usual neuromuscular reflexes, the ones I rely on for walking, weren't
happening. Everything was stiffening. Even when I had made it through another
entire sleeping car. And there was still another ahead of me. And there was a
set of stairs leading down to my compartment. I was leaning on my brother and
the car attendant, by the time I made it to the lower level.
And days later at my
brother's house in Seattle, I was still leaning on people. I had strained my
muscles considerably on the death march through the train. Had I over done it?
Probably. But I had to admit I was still moving. And muscle strain or not, I
was painfully aware of the alternative.
On Saturdays, thoughts inevitably drift back to the work week, or the workplace, which if you are retired and seven-months-post-spousal-death, amounts to the grief group. Where a couple of weeks ago one enterprising rabbi handed out something along the lines of a 'Grieving Person's Bill Of Rights.' Which is absolutely way cool. Because when I go over these myriad ways in which the non-grieving public is encouraged to cut their grief-stricken peers some additional slack...well, damned if these things shouldn't be a permanent part of my repertoire.
Starting with the mail. I don't read it. I don't know why people send it to me. I don't even open it most of the time, which can be problematic. You never know what's going to be in those little envelopes, do you? Recently, one from the California Department of Motor Vehicles was halfway into the rubbish bin and on to Recycle City, owing to the fact that I had paid my van registration, just received my new driver's license good for five years, thank you very much, and had no further business with cars and governments...when I decided to give the State the benefit of the doubt. Whoops. Marlou's car, or the one I think of as being Marlou's car, also requires a registration, a fee, a sticker to peel off and place prominently atop its predecessor. And my momentary impulse to forward the registration to Marlou, while admirable in attention to detail, is too weirdly Oliver Sacks, much like an amputee buying wool socks to warm his absent right foot.
The point being, one must open the mail. After all, so much in the mail opens itself to us. Take AT&T. Damned if I didn't get a recent letter addressed to me by hand from someone in that very company. Furthermore, on the printed letter was a yellow sticky note, also handwritten. Okay, upon closer inspection, the handwriting was computer-generated, but one could only tell by holding letter and envelope up to the light, the way one does with counterfeit money. Still, I was hooked, or it least engaged, in whatever AT&T had to say. And what they had to say was intensely personal and amounted to this: where was I? Hadn't we been friends a long time? Hadn't they been there for me all these years, and didn't I owe them the courtesy of a response to their very generous offer to combine every single communication service imaginable, including Internet, phone, fax, Navaho smoke signals, ship-to-shore flags and Morse code, all for $60 a month? Because we had been there so long, AT&T and I, and by now we had this thing. Which was bigger than both of us and deserved a little nurturing, and certainly deserved a little letter opener action down the spine of an envelope.
Which is the next point. Letter openers and quadriplegics do not mix. I open most letters by holding the envelope in my teeth, working my finger under some portion of the flap and giving the thing a mighty rip. Which has a way of ripping whatever is inside and creating a clear spillway to the floor. But this is not the point, not really, because so much mail is now virtual. And there's nothing to complain about in missives that on the physical level barely exist. They reside wholly on the level of fluorescence, pixels arrayed the way on May Day thousands of Chinese used to compose pictures of Chairman Mao with flags. No, there is nothing to open except my eyes. And I'm having trouble with that these days.
Friends send me e-mails, and I stare at them blankly. It doesn't matter if they are long or short, singing with deathless prose or coughing along ungrammatically. It all feels like too much. So I let them slip by me, and by now there are so many unanswered e-mails from so many people, so far back, that even the crudest ham-fisted notion of correspondence etiquette no longer applies. I have the dim sense that there were several people I promised to get back to during the Clinton Administration...and if they will just give me a moment or two, I will pick up where we left off.
After all, my wife hadn't died during the Clinton Administration and, in fact, I did not even have one. Which leads to several possible conclusions. One is that I have had a level of grief all along, and so cut practicalities adrift at an early stage. The other is that grief is a false concept, like compassionate conservatism. I'm not really in grief these days, but shock, remarkably long-lasting. Why not?
There is probably some quasi-sentient band of molecules just south of Beetlejuice that still can't get over the Big Bang. And that little molecular cluster is going about terribly confused...sometimes thinking the bang was way too big...other times complaining of too little bang for the buck. Don't tell them, the molecules, to get over it. And in view of the track record, advising to 'give it some time' will fall on deaf molecular ears. Better advice: give it a wide berth.
Starting with the mail. I don't read it. I don't know why people send it to me. I don't even open it most of the time, which can be problematic. You never know what's going to be in those little envelopes, do you? Recently, one from the California Department of Motor Vehicles was halfway into the rubbish bin and on to Recycle City, owing to the fact that I had paid my van registration, just received my new driver's license good for five years, thank you very much, and had no further business with cars and governments...when I decided to give the State the benefit of the doubt. Whoops. Marlou's car, or the one I think of as being Marlou's car, also requires a registration, a fee, a sticker to peel off and place prominently atop its predecessor. And my momentary impulse to forward the registration to Marlou, while admirable in attention to detail, is too weirdly Oliver Sacks, much like an amputee buying wool socks to warm his absent right foot.
The point being, one must open the mail. After all, so much in the mail opens itself to us. Take AT&T. Damned if I didn't get a recent letter addressed to me by hand from someone in that very company. Furthermore, on the printed letter was a yellow sticky note, also handwritten. Okay, upon closer inspection, the handwriting was computer-generated, but one could only tell by holding letter and envelope up to the light, the way one does with counterfeit money. Still, I was hooked, or it least engaged, in whatever AT&T had to say. And what they had to say was intensely personal and amounted to this: where was I? Hadn't we been friends a long time? Hadn't they been there for me all these years, and didn't I owe them the courtesy of a response to their very generous offer to combine every single communication service imaginable, including Internet, phone, fax, Navaho smoke signals, ship-to-shore flags and Morse code, all for $60 a month? Because we had been there so long, AT&T and I, and by now we had this thing. Which was bigger than both of us and deserved a little nurturing, and certainly deserved a little letter opener action down the spine of an envelope.
Which is the next point. Letter openers and quadriplegics do not mix. I open most letters by holding the envelope in my teeth, working my finger under some portion of the flap and giving the thing a mighty rip. Which has a way of ripping whatever is inside and creating a clear spillway to the floor. But this is not the point, not really, because so much mail is now virtual. And there's nothing to complain about in missives that on the physical level barely exist. They reside wholly on the level of fluorescence, pixels arrayed the way on May Day thousands of Chinese used to compose pictures of Chairman Mao with flags. No, there is nothing to open except my eyes. And I'm having trouble with that these days.
Friends send me e-mails, and I stare at them blankly. It doesn't matter if they are long or short, singing with deathless prose or coughing along ungrammatically. It all feels like too much. So I let them slip by me, and by now there are so many unanswered e-mails from so many people, so far back, that even the crudest ham-fisted notion of correspondence etiquette no longer applies. I have the dim sense that there were several people I promised to get back to during the Clinton Administration...and if they will just give me a moment or two, I will pick up where we left off.
After all, my wife hadn't died during the Clinton Administration and, in fact, I did not even have one. Which leads to several possible conclusions. One is that I have had a level of grief all along, and so cut practicalities adrift at an early stage. The other is that grief is a false concept, like compassionate conservatism. I'm not really in grief these days, but shock, remarkably long-lasting. Why not?
There is probably some quasi-sentient band of molecules just south of Beetlejuice that still can't get over the Big Bang. And that little molecular cluster is going about terribly confused...sometimes thinking the bang was way too big...other times complaining of too little bang for the buck. Don't tell them, the molecules, to get over it. And in view of the track record, advising to 'give it some time' will fall on deaf molecular ears. Better advice: give it a wide berth.
I am swooping in from the south, banking into the turning lane and now lining up for the final approach into the driveway, my landing spot just over a dip in the hill. The hill, or hillside, is Palo Alto's reformed Temple Beth Am. And as facilities go, it is quite splendid, though wholeheartedly suburban. If literature or personal experience has given you warm images of storefront shuls, Beth Am isn't for you. The temple and surrounding classrooms is big enough to house a small airport and might, in fact, it become one if planes landed on hillsides. Never mind. For it's actually all about the people, isn't it? And I keep turning up here on Thursday mornings for the grieving people, the ones who belong to the Jewish Healing Center Support Group. We are the officially bereaved. And I am among the unofficially aggrieved. Today I seem to be in quite a mood.
I park my whale of a white Ford van where I always do, opposite our glassy meeting room. As Detroit behemoths go, mine is quite satisfactory. But it has been giving me trouble recently, this Ford, as one of the Jewish Healing Center rabbis can attest. Only last week he wandered outside with several pieces of cellotape to provide a temporary fix. A loudspeaker built into the van's electric sliding door had worked itself free. Well, maybe it did not exactly work itself all that free. I may have helped free it by prematurely closing the door with the wheelchair lift still partly extended. Why the rush close the door and get away? Because it's a grief group. Someone giving you grief? You are probably in a grief group. And is the grief group good? Good grief. Of course, it is. Why else would we be here?
'Do you want some help?'
The answer to this question should be the one I always deliver, a cheery 'no.' It doesn't matter who asks the question, and with my gaze currently focused on my waist pouch, I can't see. But I know that the churlish response forming in my mind is probably not the best. The upbeat shtick, the one I usually manage, the one that reassures onlookers...it just isn't in me. But this guy, the aspiring helper, wants an answer. So I provide one. I tell him help is too late. I have a spinal cord injury. I half regret saying this as soon as the words leap from my mouth. But only half.
He's a youngish guy, maybe 40, and he walks with a lean executive stride. He is heading uphill, of course, and has turned downhill to inquire as to my well-being. I attempt to smooth over my prickly answer with some unnecessary information. Such as my name. I even extend my hand and ask his. Gosh, but I am a friendly guy.
'You seemed to be fumbling,' he says.
This guy has said little to ingratiate himself. He has confused my single-handed paralytic maneuvering of car keys into lap pouch with fumbling. Fumbling? I'll show this asshole some fumbling. What I actually say is more self-deprecating. Oh, I've been fumbling for years, even before my injury, I say.
I can tell this man is dying to get away. He is a speedy Jewish career guy who offered to help this cripple fumbling in a parking lot, and what does he get but a life story? I have punished this man with biographical details. He has punished me with...what...an inept word or two and the best of intentions. What I really want to tell this guy is that I don't like being confused with a cripple. Which makes me a very confused person myself. Which sums up these days. Or at least this moment, as I roll into the meeting room to join my fellow travelers in grief.
I park my whale of a white Ford van where I always do, opposite our glassy meeting room. As Detroit behemoths go, mine is quite satisfactory. But it has been giving me trouble recently, this Ford, as one of the Jewish Healing Center rabbis can attest. Only last week he wandered outside with several pieces of cellotape to provide a temporary fix. A loudspeaker built into the van's electric sliding door had worked itself free. Well, maybe it did not exactly work itself all that free. I may have helped free it by prematurely closing the door with the wheelchair lift still partly extended. Why the rush close the door and get away? Because it's a grief group. Someone giving you grief? You are probably in a grief group. And is the grief group good? Good grief. Of course, it is. Why else would we be here?
'Do you want some help?'
The answer to this question should be the one I always deliver, a cheery 'no.' It doesn't matter who asks the question, and with my gaze currently focused on my waist pouch, I can't see. But I know that the churlish response forming in my mind is probably not the best. The upbeat shtick, the one I usually manage, the one that reassures onlookers...it just isn't in me. But this guy, the aspiring helper, wants an answer. So I provide one. I tell him help is too late. I have a spinal cord injury. I half regret saying this as soon as the words leap from my mouth. But only half.
He's a youngish guy, maybe 40, and he walks with a lean executive stride. He is heading uphill, of course, and has turned downhill to inquire as to my well-being. I attempt to smooth over my prickly answer with some unnecessary information. Such as my name. I even extend my hand and ask his. Gosh, but I am a friendly guy.
'You seemed to be fumbling,' he says.
This guy has said little to ingratiate himself. He has confused my single-handed paralytic maneuvering of car keys into lap pouch with fumbling. Fumbling? I'll show this asshole some fumbling. What I actually say is more self-deprecating. Oh, I've been fumbling for years, even before my injury, I say.
I can tell this man is dying to get away. He is a speedy Jewish career guy who offered to help this cripple fumbling in a parking lot, and what does he get but a life story? I have punished this man with biographical details. He has punished me with...what...an inept word or two and the best of intentions. What I really want to tell this guy is that I don't like being confused with a cripple. Which makes me a very confused person myself. Which sums up these days. Or at least this moment, as I roll into the meeting room to join my fellow travelers in grief.
It must have been in primary school that some wise educator decided I needed to see 'Hemo the Magnificent,' an animated film about the human circulatory system. I've forgotten the details, but the heart and arteries played a starring role, and who in Hollywood was intent on elevating blood flow to such an exalted place in the popular consciousness...that is what puzzles me and makes me think of the Gare d'Orsay. Because one day you can be a vast Beaux-Arts shrine to progress, and trust me, that's what the world's first electrified railway was...and the next day you can be a Paris museum...and the whole thing starts in public consciousness of...that is what I'm trying to work out as I stare at cavernous Denver Airport.
Salu is pushing me. She is pushing me in a United Airlines wheelchair, because I have unwisely surrendered my own electric one, thinking that I had little time to change planes here. Though this thinking was wrong. I have time enough to finish a novel, reading one that is, stare at the distant ceiling and wonder how these little birds got indoors. They are flying around the United Airlines counters, oblivious to departures or arrivals, and short on food, one would suppose, although this is clearly not true. In fact, there is so much to eat en route to Houston or Bangladesh or wherever all these thousands of people are headed, the indoor bird population can only swell. I am sure these trapped birds have been the subject of staff meetings, press reports and advice from consultants. They give the place an authentic feel, and they are not pigeons, so I say, let them stay. There aren't many places where you can build a nest, stay warm, count on abundant popcorn and wing by CNN in your choice of bars.
And speaking of the Gare d'Orsay, which I wasn't, there are these long threads that thematically link this boarding lounge with...well, I don't know. What I do know is that Salu has pushed me to the nearest disabled restroom, and has waited outside while I have a rest. Fortunately, I also take the opportunity to pee. For moments later, Salu pushes me to the San Francisco gate, where I have two entire hours to work it all out. Because the thing about the Musée d'Orsay is that it makes you think about the thing that was contained in the thing that is. Paris is still the capital, but the world's first electrified rail line apparently terminates somewhere else, and all that's left is the celebration in magnificent decorative stone, lofty and inspiring. Because you just know that when your nation discovers how to make trains zip along electrically, you have something to be damned proud of. Something that deserves a monument. You can feel it. The nation's lifeblood is flowing a little more smoothly, proudly and quickly. And this railway station beats like the nation's heart, your Hemo the Magnificent, and historically it is too early to make much of a film, so architecture will have to tell the story. And a grand story it is.
And remains. It's just that the Denver version has so many other threads running through its fabric, that I get confused. Maybe some facts and figures would get me in the right mood around all this airline activity. Denver is the very center of the nation. Air routes converge here with a vengeance. The electronic sign announcing my flight to San Francisco reveals that the plane is actually a jumbo and shared by several airlines other than United, including oddly, Air New Zealand. Salu herself hails from God knows where. South Asia, I suspect, but I could be entirely wrong about this, having seen little of the world. All I know is that Concourse B goes on for so long that it contains several postal codes and crosses at least two county lines, with a ceiling that in addition to providing bird sanctuary, could house all the aircraft currently outside in the snow.
One thread of the airline experience must be labeled fear. Half the passengers on my flight arriving an hour ago from Des Moines weren't even looking out the window when tons of steel and aluminum slammed onto the concrete, vis-à-vis, landing. This is nothing to be blasé about. Same with take off. Not to mention the actual flight experience post-9/11. We are talking a planeload of denial.
Then there's the vacuity/inanity thread. Just wander into one of the concouse bars and stare zombielike at Fox News or even CNN. Or later, ask the off-shift flight attendant seated beside you why she plays a handheld video game all the way to San Francisco.
Fortunately, there's the human-connection thread. It leads from the Hampton Inn across from Des Moines Airport where at 6:30 a.m., temperature freezing, two burly hotel guys stand in the November darkness staring at my wheelchair.
I had been staring at the scene myself for days, knowing I had left a gap in my travel arrangements. The hotel's van was not equipped with any wheelchair lift, of course. But it seemed so close. Less than a mile from hotel to airport terminal. Surely there was a way...because, despite phoning in advance, there was no roll-in shower at my Dubuque hotel, and the appropriate room here in Des Moines had been booked...so what was there to do but...stare at a couple of Midwesterners who were staring at me. Not saying anything yet. Until I broke the ice, crystals of which were already forming on the hotel shuttle van's windshield. Well. Perhaps they could lift me into the van, then lift the wheelchair in as well -- assuming there was room and a door wide enough.
And then with little effort and careful instruction regarding my wavering balance, I got one foot up on the running board, prayed that I wouldn't slip while the hotel guy tilted me back onto the passenger seat. And, seconds later, slamming doors told me the wheelchair was inside. Approximately 1 1/2 minutes later the shuttle driver pulled over to talk to a policeman sitting in his patrol car at the airport entrance. 'Hi, Stan. Could I drop off a wheelchair at the terminal?' A nod from the cop. And 45 seconds later the airport transfer was history.
With a direct thread running to Salu, my next dance partner in wheelchair performance art. Grab under my right armpit and pull me forward...a command that is designed to be short and sweet and unequivocal. Salu pulls me as directed, then crouches as though bracing for a crash. Having bent her knees and clinging to my arm for dear life, I cannot straighten my legs and achieve the height required to walk. I know what Salu wants. She wants me to walk like Groucho Marx whom, with each passing year, I resemble more and more.
I tell her to stand up. Salu understands this to mean that I am in even worse physical peril than imagined, causing her to bend over, crouching even deeper to absorb the impact of my inevitable fall. Up, up, I tell her. She looks alarmed. One of the flight attendants intervenes, showing her what to do, taking my arm and assuring Salu that I will be okay.
Which is really the strongest thread of all, the one of human care which has woven itself throughout this airline morning. The ticket clerk in Des Moines shuffled around some seat assignments, and once her fancy footwork was completed, I found myself heading for Denver in FirstClass. And even there, in the vast moon station outside the Mile High City, the United clerk pulled off a switcheroo, landing me in some sort of Economy Plus Leg Room Class. I didn't ask for any of it, was grateful for all of it, and found myself relieved, at the end of the day, to be home.
Salu is pushing me. She is pushing me in a United Airlines wheelchair, because I have unwisely surrendered my own electric one, thinking that I had little time to change planes here. Though this thinking was wrong. I have time enough to finish a novel, reading one that is, stare at the distant ceiling and wonder how these little birds got indoors. They are flying around the United Airlines counters, oblivious to departures or arrivals, and short on food, one would suppose, although this is clearly not true. In fact, there is so much to eat en route to Houston or Bangladesh or wherever all these thousands of people are headed, the indoor bird population can only swell. I am sure these trapped birds have been the subject of staff meetings, press reports and advice from consultants. They give the place an authentic feel, and they are not pigeons, so I say, let them stay. There aren't many places where you can build a nest, stay warm, count on abundant popcorn and wing by CNN in your choice of bars.
And speaking of the Gare d'Orsay, which I wasn't, there are these long threads that thematically link this boarding lounge with...well, I don't know. What I do know is that Salu has pushed me to the nearest disabled restroom, and has waited outside while I have a rest. Fortunately, I also take the opportunity to pee. For moments later, Salu pushes me to the San Francisco gate, where I have two entire hours to work it all out. Because the thing about the Musée d'Orsay is that it makes you think about the thing that was contained in the thing that is. Paris is still the capital, but the world's first electrified rail line apparently terminates somewhere else, and all that's left is the celebration in magnificent decorative stone, lofty and inspiring. Because you just know that when your nation discovers how to make trains zip along electrically, you have something to be damned proud of. Something that deserves a monument. You can feel it. The nation's lifeblood is flowing a little more smoothly, proudly and quickly. And this railway station beats like the nation's heart, your Hemo the Magnificent, and historically it is too early to make much of a film, so architecture will have to tell the story. And a grand story it is.
And remains. It's just that the Denver version has so many other threads running through its fabric, that I get confused. Maybe some facts and figures would get me in the right mood around all this airline activity. Denver is the very center of the nation. Air routes converge here with a vengeance. The electronic sign announcing my flight to San Francisco reveals that the plane is actually a jumbo and shared by several airlines other than United, including oddly, Air New Zealand. Salu herself hails from God knows where. South Asia, I suspect, but I could be entirely wrong about this, having seen little of the world. All I know is that Concourse B goes on for so long that it contains several postal codes and crosses at least two county lines, with a ceiling that in addition to providing bird sanctuary, could house all the aircraft currently outside in the snow.
One thread of the airline experience must be labeled fear. Half the passengers on my flight arriving an hour ago from Des Moines weren't even looking out the window when tons of steel and aluminum slammed onto the concrete, vis-à-vis, landing. This is nothing to be blasé about. Same with take off. Not to mention the actual flight experience post-9/11. We are talking a planeload of denial.
Then there's the vacuity/inanity thread. Just wander into one of the concouse bars and stare zombielike at Fox News or even CNN. Or later, ask the off-shift flight attendant seated beside you why she plays a handheld video game all the way to San Francisco.
Fortunately, there's the human-connection thread. It leads from the Hampton Inn across from Des Moines Airport where at 6:30 a.m., temperature freezing, two burly hotel guys stand in the November darkness staring at my wheelchair.
I had been staring at the scene myself for days, knowing I had left a gap in my travel arrangements. The hotel's van was not equipped with any wheelchair lift, of course. But it seemed so close. Less than a mile from hotel to airport terminal. Surely there was a way...because, despite phoning in advance, there was no roll-in shower at my Dubuque hotel, and the appropriate room here in Des Moines had been booked...so what was there to do but...stare at a couple of Midwesterners who were staring at me. Not saying anything yet. Until I broke the ice, crystals of which were already forming on the hotel shuttle van's windshield. Well. Perhaps they could lift me into the van, then lift the wheelchair in as well -- assuming there was room and a door wide enough.
And then with little effort and careful instruction regarding my wavering balance, I got one foot up on the running board, prayed that I wouldn't slip while the hotel guy tilted me back onto the passenger seat. And, seconds later, slamming doors told me the wheelchair was inside. Approximately 1 1/2 minutes later the shuttle driver pulled over to talk to a policeman sitting in his patrol car at the airport entrance. 'Hi, Stan. Could I drop off a wheelchair at the terminal?' A nod from the cop. And 45 seconds later the airport transfer was history.
With a direct thread running to Salu, my next dance partner in wheelchair performance art. Grab under my right armpit and pull me forward...a command that is designed to be short and sweet and unequivocal. Salu pulls me as directed, then crouches as though bracing for a crash. Having bent her knees and clinging to my arm for dear life, I cannot straighten my legs and achieve the height required to walk. I know what Salu wants. She wants me to walk like Groucho Marx whom, with each passing year, I resemble more and more.
I tell her to stand up. Salu understands this to mean that I am in even worse physical peril than imagined, causing her to bend over, crouching even deeper to absorb the impact of my inevitable fall. Up, up, I tell her. She looks alarmed. One of the flight attendants intervenes, showing her what to do, taking my arm and assuring Salu that I will be okay.
Which is really the strongest thread of all, the one of human care which has woven itself throughout this airline morning. The ticket clerk in Des Moines shuffled around some seat assignments, and once her fancy footwork was completed, I found myself heading for Denver in FirstClass. And even there, in the vast moon station outside the Mile High City, the United clerk pulled off a switcheroo, landing me in some sort of Economy Plus Leg Room Class. I didn't ask for any of it, was grateful for all of it, and found myself relieved, at the end of the day, to be home.
What can one say about the arrival of in-laws? The usual intergenerational tensions erupt, issues of introversion-space invasion naturally occur. But when your spouse, their daughter, has departed this earthly realm...well, it is hard to know what to make of it all. And yet, arriving home at 9:30 PM, the lights in the upstairs flat are on. And I am on too. Wisely, I have left the door unlocked. The Tuesday night rehearsal of the Menlo Park Chorus had run late, the in-laws' flight had run early, so at 10 PM, here we are, sitting in my front room, looking at each other and trying to find the thread.
The thread has woven into a somewhat improbable fabric. Marlou's harrowing death would either make us one or make us several. We are now the former.
Instinctively, we steer clear of politics. But there is plenty of other stuff to talk about. And talk, we do. By 11 PM, in fact, the time has slipped by rather quickly. I head for bed, knowing that in the morning, I will head for Peet's with Dick and Joan at an early hour, then take a meeting...not that I take many these days. I am talking to consultants about the Menlo Park Chorus.
Do I really care about the Chorus? Well, I do, a bit. More important, Marlou cared a lot. So there are three of us, two arts consultants and me, staring at each other, stirring our espressos and making progress. When I think about it, and in this moment I am, there's much to be said for such contacts. This grows out of living in an affluent university town, being there for 30 years and just being. Being me. This is a difficult thing to say. Thank you for being you -- this message sponsored by your ego. Okay.
I have one. We all need one. And, yes, I feel good about these two arts consultants, because I know who they are, what they have done. And they are the finest of the finest.
I am exploring the possibility that money Marlou bequeathed in a convoluted way to the Chorus can get to its goal a little more effectively. Things wrap up, there is an exchange of cards, a targeting of objectives for the new year. Someone lightly mentions Marlou's ideas about community music. And I start to cry. This is really surprising, for the meeting appeared to be over. But grief isn't over, things like this keep happening, and though there is no need to apologize, somehow I feel obliged to say I am sorry. I roll off to buy RyKrisp, dry crackers for wet tears.
Lunch with the in-laws, paperwork, e-mails, some of the next-stage tasks for the betterment of the Chorus and damned if it isn't 2 PM. Through the front window, I can see Joan at work in the patio. She has volunteered to cut the dead flowers off the plants. Seated in a patio chair, she plucks away at the blossoms. I roll my wheelchair outside, come up behind her, and all is revealed...in that everything about the day has been leading here. To Joan, seated with her back to me, with nothing about her genuinely 83 years old, except aspects of physiognomy. She is telling me that flowers look so much better when the dead ones are removed. Things need sprucing up. A bit of garden tidying for the autumn. I had things to do this afternoon, but not now. There is some sort of quiet truth unfolding here, something I mostly try to escape. And I am meant to be here with it, whatever it is.
It's such a small space and not even mine. It wasn't even ours. Entirely rented. Nothing invested except care, attention and sense of place. And all of it happened after Marlou's diagnosis. The old cracked patio dating from 1955 was hopeless, so as with any ruin, the next civilization built atop its predecessor. Marlou spent an entire afternoon in Mountain View, California, buying bricks. The order was so small that we had to cut a special deal regarding delivery. A handyman laid the new bricks atop the old cracked concrete, poured dry sand and concrete between the cracks.
Marlou's cousin Betsy spent another afternoon with Marlou in additional suburbs buying plants. My brother and his wife, the cousin and Marlou, went about the business of planting. Although I may be wrong about the Marlou part. At that point, she may have been looking on fondly, more an observer than participant. Marlou never acknowledged her failing energy until she had to.
And now her mother is wondering about the ferns. Should she pull out the dead branches? What does one do with ferns? Well, well. Joan surveys her work. Her look is briefly sad. Abundant sentiment, little sentimentality.
She is not going to linger over this scene. I sense this scene is lingering over her. Which may be why she has, without a word, risen and headed for the vegetable garden in back. It's fallow now. Nothing happening, except the cover crop. I have asked Joan to help me transfer sprouting fava beans from one bed to the other. I tell her, keeping up a line of chatter over the prevailing tragic circumstance, how the cover crop works. Fava beans send down long roots. Oh, she says, to break up the soil. I don't know what we're talking about. Joan transfers a few seedlings, and I call a halt to the proceedings.
To some, grief is a series of small tasks. No words, or very few. Just the right gestures, in the appropriate space. Doing without overt attention. Attending to things. Nothing will end this day except the day itself. Shadows lengthening, we collect our rusty garden tools and head inside.
The thread has woven into a somewhat improbable fabric. Marlou's harrowing death would either make us one or make us several. We are now the former.
Instinctively, we steer clear of politics. But there is plenty of other stuff to talk about. And talk, we do. By 11 PM, in fact, the time has slipped by rather quickly. I head for bed, knowing that in the morning, I will head for Peet's with Dick and Joan at an early hour, then take a meeting...not that I take many these days. I am talking to consultants about the Menlo Park Chorus.
Do I really care about the Chorus? Well, I do, a bit. More important, Marlou cared a lot. So there are three of us, two arts consultants and me, staring at each other, stirring our espressos and making progress. When I think about it, and in this moment I am, there's much to be said for such contacts. This grows out of living in an affluent university town, being there for 30 years and just being. Being me. This is a difficult thing to say. Thank you for being you -- this message sponsored by your ego. Okay.
I have one. We all need one. And, yes, I feel good about these two arts consultants, because I know who they are, what they have done. And they are the finest of the finest.
I am exploring the possibility that money Marlou bequeathed in a convoluted way to the Chorus can get to its goal a little more effectively. Things wrap up, there is an exchange of cards, a targeting of objectives for the new year. Someone lightly mentions Marlou's ideas about community music. And I start to cry. This is really surprising, for the meeting appeared to be over. But grief isn't over, things like this keep happening, and though there is no need to apologize, somehow I feel obliged to say I am sorry. I roll off to buy RyKrisp, dry crackers for wet tears.
Lunch with the in-laws, paperwork, e-mails, some of the next-stage tasks for the betterment of the Chorus and damned if it isn't 2 PM. Through the front window, I can see Joan at work in the patio. She has volunteered to cut the dead flowers off the plants. Seated in a patio chair, she plucks away at the blossoms. I roll my wheelchair outside, come up behind her, and all is revealed...in that everything about the day has been leading here. To Joan, seated with her back to me, with nothing about her genuinely 83 years old, except aspects of physiognomy. She is telling me that flowers look so much better when the dead ones are removed. Things need sprucing up. A bit of garden tidying for the autumn. I had things to do this afternoon, but not now. There is some sort of quiet truth unfolding here, something I mostly try to escape. And I am meant to be here with it, whatever it is.
It's such a small space and not even mine. It wasn't even ours. Entirely rented. Nothing invested except care, attention and sense of place. And all of it happened after Marlou's diagnosis. The old cracked patio dating from 1955 was hopeless, so as with any ruin, the next civilization built atop its predecessor. Marlou spent an entire afternoon in Mountain View, California, buying bricks. The order was so small that we had to cut a special deal regarding delivery. A handyman laid the new bricks atop the old cracked concrete, poured dry sand and concrete between the cracks.
Marlou's cousin Betsy spent another afternoon with Marlou in additional suburbs buying plants. My brother and his wife, the cousin and Marlou, went about the business of planting. Although I may be wrong about the Marlou part. At that point, she may have been looking on fondly, more an observer than participant. Marlou never acknowledged her failing energy until she had to.
And now her mother is wondering about the ferns. Should she pull out the dead branches? What does one do with ferns? Well, well. Joan surveys her work. Her look is briefly sad. Abundant sentiment, little sentimentality.
She is not going to linger over this scene. I sense this scene is lingering over her. Which may be why she has, without a word, risen and headed for the vegetable garden in back. It's fallow now. Nothing happening, except the cover crop. I have asked Joan to help me transfer sprouting fava beans from one bed to the other. I tell her, keeping up a line of chatter over the prevailing tragic circumstance, how the cover crop works. Fava beans send down long roots. Oh, she says, to break up the soil. I don't know what we're talking about. Joan transfers a few seedlings, and I call a halt to the proceedings.
To some, grief is a series of small tasks. No words, or very few. Just the right gestures, in the appropriate space. Doing without overt attention. Attending to things. Nothing will end this day except the day itself. Shadows lengthening, we collect our rusty garden tools and head inside.
It is not even 6 AM, but I am alone in my apartment and experiencing a moment of digestive uncertainty that makes me want to be out of bed and in my wheelchair. It is dark. This condition often prevails at night, and it would be unwise to take this personally, yet I do. In the dark, proprioception muted by bad neurology, my sitting up brings a moment of spatial confusion. I have to get my neck straight, then the light on, before it all makes neuromuscular sense.
What to do with such an ungodly hour except get on with the day? There's something much less daunting about slipping on blue jeans with no underwear and yanking on a pullover. The garment count numbers two. No, this does not include shoes and socks. But where there's a will, there's a quadriplegic way. In terms of facing the outside world, this means slipping on slip-ons, i.e., tieless shoes without socks. This is actually a recent discovery, and the process takes seconds, and I am now prepared to face the outside world. Which does mean I have made a critical morning decision. We, I, whoever appears to be in control of things this morning are, am, going out for coffee.
I have a somewhat suicidal habit of turning up the speed control to maximum and bouncing my wheelchair the wrong way down the freshly paved length of Live Oak Ave. And why not? Menlo Park, a.k.a., Mellow Park, somehow produces a rush-hour without traffic. Oh, the cars get a bit enthusiastic on the north/south thoroughfare of El Camino, but their frenzy is a mild one and does not last long. Meanwhile, I have almost a quarter-mile of unobstructed, smooth sailing down the morning pavement before I turn at the recently poured concrete driveway by the mortuary, leading me to the sidewalk without a bump.
I suppose if you're a writer and feel the richness of small-town Americana, living in one thinly populated place for the duration...well, that's the thing to do. Won't be long before you've got a Spoon River Anthology and everyone is looking for the Grover's Corners Mall. The problem lies not in the writing, but in the experiencing. Which is what's happening to me right now. I have been zipping past the Spangler Brothers mortuary for more than 15 years, always puzzled by its somewhat blank expanse...such a large, single-story building...and a big empty parking lot. All of which gets heavy, albeit periodic, use. The funeral of a local policeman, killed in the line of duty, jammed the place and literally shut down Live Oak Ave. Which, if you are of a writerly disposition, gives you a working title: 'Dead Cop on Live Oak.'
In short, there's no getting away from reminders. That's the upside, and the downside, of being so rooted in small-town life. The other downside involves arriving at Café Borrone at the unfortunate hour of 8:15 AM, short on caffeine, even more undersupplied for patience, and finding a queue out the door. Nothing wrong with a queue, but a quick glance at the distant counter explains why the line isn't moving. Only one guy at the cash register. It doesn't take a lot of small-town savvy to figure out the next step. I roll to the crêpe joint by the railway station.
As for the crêperie, I don't know whether to exult or lament. Rolling by the place, it is hard to tell if business is underway. The door is unlocked, so I go inside. The menu is unchanged. It is difficult to know if I should order at the counter, take a seat or go home. I choose a middle course. I order at the counter, grab a table outside, and do not go home. After all, there is some chance that, over a period of time, a goat cheese gallette will arrive. All of which, in my current mood, may or may not be a good thing. This place offers enormous privacy. And since my mornings tend to be sad and reflective, this could be just what the doctor ordered.
Sadly, Marlou's broker ordered up heavy doses of Exxon stock. I just learned this yesterday, for I have finally...months too late...gotten down to the routine and appropriate business of dealing with the trust I inherited. I have sought financial advice. I've even attempted to understand bonds. But looking at investment statements...I don't know, the resistance can't be explained. I just haven't wanted to do it.
But okay, there it is, and amidst the usual batch of mutual funds, Marlou has singled out a couple of individual stocks that she wanted to have for her very own. I probably absorb a certain dose of Exxon through my own mutual funds. But the level of toxicity seems higher when you mainline, buying the securities outright. It's like the pharmaceutical contents of one of the sleeping pills prescribed to me after Marlou's death. Who knows what's in the thing? There might be something much more honest and straightforward in saying to my local drug pusher, 'give me 10 hits of pure Afghan heroin, and hold the methamphetamine.' As someone who was not long ago making a living as a technology-journalist-for-hire, and often bragging of my additional skills as a science writer, I am not unaware of the Exxon opportunity. The company made it known to the PR and writing and television production community that it was going to spend over $100 million to explain away global warming.
Which is why I need a moment alone with my single macchiato...I had ordered a double, thank you very much...my expansive crêpe and the morning fog. Sell the stock? It doesn't matter. Think about Marlou? Oh, it does matter. Exxon was something I needed to argue about. Did she? Certainly not, at least consciously. Did we? Yes, I believe we, the couple, did. She had her background, I had mine, and we were never going to understand each other. But we might have understood our misunderstanding. And if that sounds silly, it's because I'm conveying the letter of the law, not the spirit. The spirit is the thing that flicks its tail. To quote the great avatar, Woody Allen, a relationship, like a shark, has to move forward.
And in this moment the morning's sadness coalesces into a truth. That this was as far as Marlou came in life. She was a very sensitive, very private, woman who found too much protection in her parents as a child...and struggled to free herself, as best she could, in midlife. She freed me from something too, a certain lonely pessimism. And the Exxon stock? Well it was certainly her way of saying 'this is what I want' -- and maybe even 'fuck you, Paul with your superior liberal ways.' And the sad part? Well that's a collective sadness, something much of America shares. It is the lonely sound of 'me.' A wrong note played loudly in the quietest moment of a symphony. Which sounds right if you literally don't know the score. Or hate music. Which wasn't true of Marlou. And if this Exxon stock smacks of social alienation...and makes me wonder how my departed wife would have adjusted to a changing world...I may find the joke is on me. The world could horribly change in her direction.
What matters is that Marlou found a new direction in me, and proceeded down that course as long and as well as she could. And now it's over. Sometimes the road ends. And we barely see the dead-end sign. Before we have to drive our wheelchair around to the Spangler Mortuary entrance, which proves to be in the back, hidden from the street. After which you're left with a curiously heavy box, a lot of unanswered questions and the certainty that the quality of humanity, even of love itself, has much to do with the distance we travel in life.
What to do with such an ungodly hour except get on with the day? There's something much less daunting about slipping on blue jeans with no underwear and yanking on a pullover. The garment count numbers two. No, this does not include shoes and socks. But where there's a will, there's a quadriplegic way. In terms of facing the outside world, this means slipping on slip-ons, i.e., tieless shoes without socks. This is actually a recent discovery, and the process takes seconds, and I am now prepared to face the outside world. Which does mean I have made a critical morning decision. We, I, whoever appears to be in control of things this morning are, am, going out for coffee.
I have a somewhat suicidal habit of turning up the speed control to maximum and bouncing my wheelchair the wrong way down the freshly paved length of Live Oak Ave. And why not? Menlo Park, a.k.a., Mellow Park, somehow produces a rush-hour without traffic. Oh, the cars get a bit enthusiastic on the north/south thoroughfare of El Camino, but their frenzy is a mild one and does not last long. Meanwhile, I have almost a quarter-mile of unobstructed, smooth sailing down the morning pavement before I turn at the recently poured concrete driveway by the mortuary, leading me to the sidewalk without a bump.
I suppose if you're a writer and feel the richness of small-town Americana, living in one thinly populated place for the duration...well, that's the thing to do. Won't be long before you've got a Spoon River Anthology and everyone is looking for the Grover's Corners Mall. The problem lies not in the writing, but in the experiencing. Which is what's happening to me right now. I have been zipping past the Spangler Brothers mortuary for more than 15 years, always puzzled by its somewhat blank expanse...such a large, single-story building...and a big empty parking lot. All of which gets heavy, albeit periodic, use. The funeral of a local policeman, killed in the line of duty, jammed the place and literally shut down Live Oak Ave. Which, if you are of a writerly disposition, gives you a working title: 'Dead Cop on Live Oak.'
In short, there's no getting away from reminders. That's the upside, and the downside, of being so rooted in small-town life. The other downside involves arriving at Café Borrone at the unfortunate hour of 8:15 AM, short on caffeine, even more undersupplied for patience, and finding a queue out the door. Nothing wrong with a queue, but a quick glance at the distant counter explains why the line isn't moving. Only one guy at the cash register. It doesn't take a lot of small-town savvy to figure out the next step. I roll to the crêpe joint by the railway station.
As for the crêperie, I don't know whether to exult or lament. Rolling by the place, it is hard to tell if business is underway. The door is unlocked, so I go inside. The menu is unchanged. It is difficult to know if I should order at the counter, take a seat or go home. I choose a middle course. I order at the counter, grab a table outside, and do not go home. After all, there is some chance that, over a period of time, a goat cheese gallette will arrive. All of which, in my current mood, may or may not be a good thing. This place offers enormous privacy. And since my mornings tend to be sad and reflective, this could be just what the doctor ordered.
Sadly, Marlou's broker ordered up heavy doses of Exxon stock. I just learned this yesterday, for I have finally...months too late...gotten down to the routine and appropriate business of dealing with the trust I inherited. I have sought financial advice. I've even attempted to understand bonds. But looking at investment statements...I don't know, the resistance can't be explained. I just haven't wanted to do it.
But okay, there it is, and amidst the usual batch of mutual funds, Marlou has singled out a couple of individual stocks that she wanted to have for her very own. I probably absorb a certain dose of Exxon through my own mutual funds. But the level of toxicity seems higher when you mainline, buying the securities outright. It's like the pharmaceutical contents of one of the sleeping pills prescribed to me after Marlou's death. Who knows what's in the thing? There might be something much more honest and straightforward in saying to my local drug pusher, 'give me 10 hits of pure Afghan heroin, and hold the methamphetamine.' As someone who was not long ago making a living as a technology-journalist-for-hire, and often bragging of my additional skills as a science writer, I am not unaware of the Exxon opportunity. The company made it known to the PR and writing and television production community that it was going to spend over $100 million to explain away global warming.
Which is why I need a moment alone with my single macchiato...I had ordered a double, thank you very much...my expansive crêpe and the morning fog. Sell the stock? It doesn't matter. Think about Marlou? Oh, it does matter. Exxon was something I needed to argue about. Did she? Certainly not, at least consciously. Did we? Yes, I believe we, the couple, did. She had her background, I had mine, and we were never going to understand each other. But we might have understood our misunderstanding. And if that sounds silly, it's because I'm conveying the letter of the law, not the spirit. The spirit is the thing that flicks its tail. To quote the great avatar, Woody Allen, a relationship, like a shark, has to move forward.
And in this moment the morning's sadness coalesces into a truth. That this was as far as Marlou came in life. She was a very sensitive, very private, woman who found too much protection in her parents as a child...and struggled to free herself, as best she could, in midlife. She freed me from something too, a certain lonely pessimism. And the Exxon stock? Well it was certainly her way of saying 'this is what I want' -- and maybe even 'fuck you, Paul with your superior liberal ways.' And the sad part? Well that's a collective sadness, something much of America shares. It is the lonely sound of 'me.' A wrong note played loudly in the quietest moment of a symphony. Which sounds right if you literally don't know the score. Or hate music. Which wasn't true of Marlou. And if this Exxon stock smacks of social alienation...and makes me wonder how my departed wife would have adjusted to a changing world...I may find the joke is on me. The world could horribly change in her direction.
What matters is that Marlou found a new direction in me, and proceeded down that course as long and as well as she could. And now it's over. Sometimes the road ends. And we barely see the dead-end sign. Before we have to drive our wheelchair around to the Spangler Mortuary entrance, which proves to be in the back, hidden from the street. After which you're left with a curiously heavy box, a lot of unanswered questions and the certainty that the quality of humanity, even of love itself, has much to do with the distance we travel in life.
Many forces conspire to defeat the retired person and his day. The first is early awakening. My bedside clock says 5:20 AM, and though the alarm is set for 6:30, I give up and get up. With my legs dropped over the edge of the bed, I commence a mildly harrowing series of quadriplegic lunges, featuring my abdominal muscles, which eventually get me into a sedentary posture, although an unbalanced one. I need to get my neck up and straight before the room feels properly aligned. I hit the switch on the bedside table, the lamp comes on, and the day is coming on too early. This sets expectations excessively high. Particularly in view of what is to follow.
Lorna, bursting in fresh as the day at 7:30, is surprised to see me up, talcum powdered and blue-jeaned. I assure her that I have things to do, places to go. Trains to catch. I do take advantage of her presence to seize my crutch, rise from the wheelchair and hobble about the apartment. According to my physiotherapist, this will make me a true mensch. By 8:20, breakfasted and mild exercised, I speed toward the train.
At the back of my consciousness resides a fear of wheelchair electronics. It began in August, in Edinburgh, when Jake and Elliot, my twentysomething traveling companions, parked my wheelchair outside a comedy club. My idea, a foolish one, was to disconnect the cable to the joystick controller. This means unplugging, then plugging back in, wires as fine as hairs. Why an all-terrain wheelchair, bashable by design, should require a surgeon's hands to unplug a key component...well, God only knows. The chair began some telltale flashing, sign of a short circuit, as soon as the thing was reconnected. A quick tug on the cable and the flashing stopped. Of course, that was in August. No more electronic flashing until last week...and another cable tug stopped the problem. So, any statistician would tell you that this problem is an intermittent one, surfacing every few months. But I am not a statistic, and what's surfacing in me on the way to Caltrain is the image of my wheelchair flashing its short-circuit message, and coming to a total halt, right on the train tracks. Naturally, this doesn't happen. It's not my time. But I didn't think it was Marlou's either, so what is one to make of all this? The train is a fast one, and I make it to my dentist in Noe Valley, more or less the epicenter of San Francisco, right on time.
I like my dentist. She is just back from two weeks in Italy and experienced the usual travel horrors. She lost her wallet. She, and virtually all of her tour party, succumbed to food poisoning. But in recounting these events, I can tell she feels neither victimized nor disturbed. She think she left her wallet in a Rome cab. Everyone got sick on pasta carbonara, so maybe it was the semi-raw egg. She had a good time. My teeth are fine. Linda, who has been coming to work there as long as I have been coming for dentistry there, helps me down the stairs. I have forgotten my crutch. Which, these days, is really not so bad, if one believes the general wisdom concerning grieving persons.
Leo and I meet for lunch. We have sushi. We have the same table in the front each time we dine here. Neither of us smiles much. Maybe we are sad guys. I don't know. Leo is more than 20 years my senior, and as my former writing instructor and unofficial mentor, I have to tell him about getting turned down by a local publisher. Oh, that guy, Leo says. The same editor has just turned down Leo, author of several stunning books and winner of the O'Henry Award. This puts things in a certain perspective. I order lots of sushi.
I even try to be on my way at an efficient hour. After all, at the heart of the day, the business end, one might say, is half an hour of dental hygiene followed by one hour of lunch. The rush-hour train to San Francisco was an express, but the midday schedule is all about hard times, frequency cut to hourly, duration longer, fares higher. See you, I tell Leo. He heads for his bank. I nip into the bus shelter where a digital display tells me that the #48 Qintara will next arrive in 26 minutes. Splendid. I turn my wheelchair speed control up to high and nip toward the tram stop on Church Street. On the way, a #48 drifts past me. I stare at it in disbelief, for the bus is full of passengers, not a trainee Muni driver and instructor. A real one, passing right by me...which means the day is passing by me too. For I had all connections worked out, zipping down to the BART station, boarding an underground train for Milbrae, smoothly connecting with Caltrain. But I have blown it. Worse, I have demonstrated what my British cousin Caroline assures me is a boundless gullibility concerning trains and transit. The next-bus-in-26-minutes sign containing as much truth as a North Korean press release.
I have a succession of long transit waits. It is after 3:30 when I finally roll in my door. Tomorrow I will turn up for the grief group. Do I give them a lot of grief? Or they me? Maybe I need to stop pretending that I have a job. Leo pointed out a pie shop on 24th St., a place where wise San Franciscans purchase take away dinners, composed of pies, small ones, savory or sweet. I was in a big hurry. I had to get back to...my supposed schedule. Back to normal. Something tells me, it's never going to happen.
Lorna, bursting in fresh as the day at 7:30, is surprised to see me up, talcum powdered and blue-jeaned. I assure her that I have things to do, places to go. Trains to catch. I do take advantage of her presence to seize my crutch, rise from the wheelchair and hobble about the apartment. According to my physiotherapist, this will make me a true mensch. By 8:20, breakfasted and mild exercised, I speed toward the train.
At the back of my consciousness resides a fear of wheelchair electronics. It began in August, in Edinburgh, when Jake and Elliot, my twentysomething traveling companions, parked my wheelchair outside a comedy club. My idea, a foolish one, was to disconnect the cable to the joystick controller. This means unplugging, then plugging back in, wires as fine as hairs. Why an all-terrain wheelchair, bashable by design, should require a surgeon's hands to unplug a key component...well, God only knows. The chair began some telltale flashing, sign of a short circuit, as soon as the thing was reconnected. A quick tug on the cable and the flashing stopped. Of course, that was in August. No more electronic flashing until last week...and another cable tug stopped the problem. So, any statistician would tell you that this problem is an intermittent one, surfacing every few months. But I am not a statistic, and what's surfacing in me on the way to Caltrain is the image of my wheelchair flashing its short-circuit message, and coming to a total halt, right on the train tracks. Naturally, this doesn't happen. It's not my time. But I didn't think it was Marlou's either, so what is one to make of all this? The train is a fast one, and I make it to my dentist in Noe Valley, more or less the epicenter of San Francisco, right on time.
I like my dentist. She is just back from two weeks in Italy and experienced the usual travel horrors. She lost her wallet. She, and virtually all of her tour party, succumbed to food poisoning. But in recounting these events, I can tell she feels neither victimized nor disturbed. She think she left her wallet in a Rome cab. Everyone got sick on pasta carbonara, so maybe it was the semi-raw egg. She had a good time. My teeth are fine. Linda, who has been coming to work there as long as I have been coming for dentistry there, helps me down the stairs. I have forgotten my crutch. Which, these days, is really not so bad, if one believes the general wisdom concerning grieving persons.
Leo and I meet for lunch. We have sushi. We have the same table in the front each time we dine here. Neither of us smiles much. Maybe we are sad guys. I don't know. Leo is more than 20 years my senior, and as my former writing instructor and unofficial mentor, I have to tell him about getting turned down by a local publisher. Oh, that guy, Leo says. The same editor has just turned down Leo, author of several stunning books and winner of the O'Henry Award. This puts things in a certain perspective. I order lots of sushi.
I even try to be on my way at an efficient hour. After all, at the heart of the day, the business end, one might say, is half an hour of dental hygiene followed by one hour of lunch. The rush-hour train to San Francisco was an express, but the midday schedule is all about hard times, frequency cut to hourly, duration longer, fares higher. See you, I tell Leo. He heads for his bank. I nip into the bus shelter where a digital display tells me that the #48 Qintara will next arrive in 26 minutes. Splendid. I turn my wheelchair speed control up to high and nip toward the tram stop on Church Street. On the way, a #48 drifts past me. I stare at it in disbelief, for the bus is full of passengers, not a trainee Muni driver and instructor. A real one, passing right by me...which means the day is passing by me too. For I had all connections worked out, zipping down to the BART station, boarding an underground train for Milbrae, smoothly connecting with Caltrain. But I have blown it. Worse, I have demonstrated what my British cousin Caroline assures me is a boundless gullibility concerning trains and transit. The next-bus-in-26-minutes sign containing as much truth as a North Korean press release.
I have a succession of long transit waits. It is after 3:30 when I finally roll in my door. Tomorrow I will turn up for the grief group. Do I give them a lot of grief? Or they me? Maybe I need to stop pretending that I have a job. Leo pointed out a pie shop on 24th St., a place where wise San Franciscans purchase take away dinners, composed of pies, small ones, savory or sweet. I was in a big hurry. I had to get back to...my supposed schedule. Back to normal. Something tells me, it's never going to happen.
Dan is my physiotherapist. That is his job. I am his patient. That is mine. And somewhere along the road we gave a both jobs and decided to be at least unofficial, friends. Which confuses me slightly. He is so glad to see me after a two-year absence, that I don't quite know what to do. His physiotherapy gym is humming, and his effusive welcome is witnessed by a guy who is selling me a wheelchair. We are gathered here today for the purpose of fitting my aging body into a new vehicle.
The last time I visited Dan, Marlou was with me. Exercise, her oncologist said, was part of the treatment. A little chemotherapy, a little exercise, a little less cancer maybe. Marlou was not terribly keen on physical activity. Dan worked out a whole program for her. But I have watched him for many years out of the corner of my eye. And he was watching Marlou out of the corner of his. He has been in the physical medicine business too long to worry about whether anyone listens to his advice. Marlou liked him. She listened to what Dan had to say and promptly ignored every word. Which may have been perfectly wise. Thinking that exercise can do anything about cancer is like hoping your bucket-brigade skills will come in handy when the dam breaks.
I get out of the wheelchair and perch at the edge of Dan's therapy table. Like all great artists, it's hard to keep Dan away from his medium. That is to say, me. The focus couldn't be clearer or narrower. My butt and my side. My torso has a way of tilting, as do my hips. The interplay of these flexible orthopedic systems is surprisingly complicated, to hear Dan and the wheelchair guy describe it. They can tilt the cushion one way to make my hips rise, but that might knock my rib cage too much the other. What if there's one torso support on the upper right, another on the lower left, and the cushion bulges in back and recedes in front? The footrests. What about the footrests? Where are his feet going to be when his butt is over here, his torso over there, and all of California slides south with continental drift? Where?
While this debate rages, I feel I should tell Dan that my wife has died. I'm not sure why. It just seems part of the story, and by now we know our stories well enough to exchange these details. So I tell him, apropos of nothing. Oh, he acknowledges lightly. I suspect Dan already knows this. He tells me his wife, also a physiotherapist, has had a cancerous cyst close to her spinal cord...and now shows a much milder version of my symptoms. Oh, I say just as lightly. The mortality beat goes on.
Dan is pressed for time. This seems to be a hallmark of American medicine, part of the atmospherics of efficiency the system somehow achieves, without results. System be damned, Dan seems to be saying. Whatever his schedule, he has gotten lost in the neuromuscular wonderland that is my body. Move your scapulae down and together, he urges. I give this a try. Touch your right shoulder to the ground, Dan instructs. I shrug, the end-product of enormous outpourings of motor neurons. Point your right finger at your left hip. At this, I only sigh. I would give Dan the finger, all right, if I could. We both know this is a pro forma request, my upper right extremity being a neurological ghost town. Sit up as straight as you can. Another joke. This time, Dan and the wheelchair guy linger over the punchline. It's not a true scoliosis, they agree. It's...some other word, already passing in one ear and out the other. I don't care. What's surprising, is that I don't mind. At least not as much as I used to.
Muscle tests, and that's what Dan is doing, used to depress me utterly. They represent a full inventory of what is wrong with my body. A part by part, piece by piece, dissection of what doesn't move. It's the full disaster laid bare, parts labeled, signs pointing from one disaster area to the other. The Full Neuromuscular Monty. What I'd like to know is how Dan stays in shape. He must work out himself. We are more or less the same age, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep the strength up and the weight down. Possibly, Dan's solution lies in hard work and ceaseless activity. This muscle test he has just concluded takes, at minimum, an hour. He has crammed the sucker into 45 minutes. And Dan is not even out of breath.
I'm really pleased with the rotator cuff, he observes to no one in particular. My shoulder is part of Dan's handiwork. The wheelchair guy wants to know what and how Dan achieved such things with my tendons. To my surprise, Dan goes into great detail. He shifts my shoulder up and down like a medical school dummy, explaining how the tendon used to get pinched. Before I got to work yanking on elastic bands. I give Dan full credit for this. What started as a disastrous shoulder ache 12 years ago, petered out. In the end, there was nothing but occasional mild pain. The latter totally alleviated by the systematic pulling of these elastic bits.
When it's over, I exit totally exhausted. No, it's not as draining as the physiotherapy sessions of my youth. It used to be that every year's muscle test showed a steady decline, despite exercise, regular stretching and hope. Sad to face things going downhill. As though they were not going downhill for everyone else. Which, intellectually, I knew to be the case. But did not much care. By now I do not much care about the actual tests. Anymore than Marlou cares about her SAT scores.
The isolation of body parts reaches a new level after nightfall. This takes the form of Strauss' Salomé, on display at the San Francisco Opera. A friend had prepared me for some heavy going. Read my e-mail after you see it, she advised. It is, at least partly, a mess, she judged. Because it's an opera, a level of mess almost always exists. So what's to worry? I was prepared for one important aspect: no intermission. The thing cranks up and rolls along without interval. Fair warning for the bladder compromised. What the hell.
Who was John the Baptist? Mentally, reading the program's synopsis, I'm trying to get a handle on the characters and the plot. The house lights dim before I can make much progress, but if John was a Baptist, Bill a Presbyterian and Lewis a Rastafarian, and they ask the bartender for the same scotch.... Too late. The curtain is up, and why, no one can tell, since the cast all stand about waiting for the conductor to enter.
Things unfold. Why John is a Baptist is never revealed. There are some Jews, however, who stand about tugging on their phylacteries and engaging in pointless speculation about Elijah. Time passes. Salomé wants a little head. This used to be the stuff of naughty jokes. But Salomé wants the one currently attached to John's neck. She gets it, for reasons that are also not clear. She also goes to unmotivated lengths to fondle the head once detached. There is some rather splendid music in between. Surely not much of Oscar Wilde's famous one-act remains intact here. At least, that's my guess. I'll have to give it a read. Otherwise, there is simply no explaining this two-hour paean to morbid fear of female sexuality. I think I enjoyed the muscle test more. It's a relief to drive home.
The last time I visited Dan, Marlou was with me. Exercise, her oncologist said, was part of the treatment. A little chemotherapy, a little exercise, a little less cancer maybe. Marlou was not terribly keen on physical activity. Dan worked out a whole program for her. But I have watched him for many years out of the corner of my eye. And he was watching Marlou out of the corner of his. He has been in the physical medicine business too long to worry about whether anyone listens to his advice. Marlou liked him. She listened to what Dan had to say and promptly ignored every word. Which may have been perfectly wise. Thinking that exercise can do anything about cancer is like hoping your bucket-brigade skills will come in handy when the dam breaks.
I get out of the wheelchair and perch at the edge of Dan's therapy table. Like all great artists, it's hard to keep Dan away from his medium. That is to say, me. The focus couldn't be clearer or narrower. My butt and my side. My torso has a way of tilting, as do my hips. The interplay of these flexible orthopedic systems is surprisingly complicated, to hear Dan and the wheelchair guy describe it. They can tilt the cushion one way to make my hips rise, but that might knock my rib cage too much the other. What if there's one torso support on the upper right, another on the lower left, and the cushion bulges in back and recedes in front? The footrests. What about the footrests? Where are his feet going to be when his butt is over here, his torso over there, and all of California slides south with continental drift? Where?
While this debate rages, I feel I should tell Dan that my wife has died. I'm not sure why. It just seems part of the story, and by now we know our stories well enough to exchange these details. So I tell him, apropos of nothing. Oh, he acknowledges lightly. I suspect Dan already knows this. He tells me his wife, also a physiotherapist, has had a cancerous cyst close to her spinal cord...and now shows a much milder version of my symptoms. Oh, I say just as lightly. The mortality beat goes on.
Dan is pressed for time. This seems to be a hallmark of American medicine, part of the atmospherics of efficiency the system somehow achieves, without results. System be damned, Dan seems to be saying. Whatever his schedule, he has gotten lost in the neuromuscular wonderland that is my body. Move your scapulae down and together, he urges. I give this a try. Touch your right shoulder to the ground, Dan instructs. I shrug, the end-product of enormous outpourings of motor neurons. Point your right finger at your left hip. At this, I only sigh. I would give Dan the finger, all right, if I could. We both know this is a pro forma request, my upper right extremity being a neurological ghost town. Sit up as straight as you can. Another joke. This time, Dan and the wheelchair guy linger over the punchline. It's not a true scoliosis, they agree. It's...some other word, already passing in one ear and out the other. I don't care. What's surprising, is that I don't mind. At least not as much as I used to.
Muscle tests, and that's what Dan is doing, used to depress me utterly. They represent a full inventory of what is wrong with my body. A part by part, piece by piece, dissection of what doesn't move. It's the full disaster laid bare, parts labeled, signs pointing from one disaster area to the other. The Full Neuromuscular Monty. What I'd like to know is how Dan stays in shape. He must work out himself. We are more or less the same age, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep the strength up and the weight down. Possibly, Dan's solution lies in hard work and ceaseless activity. This muscle test he has just concluded takes, at minimum, an hour. He has crammed the sucker into 45 minutes. And Dan is not even out of breath.
I'm really pleased with the rotator cuff, he observes to no one in particular. My shoulder is part of Dan's handiwork. The wheelchair guy wants to know what and how Dan achieved such things with my tendons. To my surprise, Dan goes into great detail. He shifts my shoulder up and down like a medical school dummy, explaining how the tendon used to get pinched. Before I got to work yanking on elastic bands. I give Dan full credit for this. What started as a disastrous shoulder ache 12 years ago, petered out. In the end, there was nothing but occasional mild pain. The latter totally alleviated by the systematic pulling of these elastic bits.
When it's over, I exit totally exhausted. No, it's not as draining as the physiotherapy sessions of my youth. It used to be that every year's muscle test showed a steady decline, despite exercise, regular stretching and hope. Sad to face things going downhill. As though they were not going downhill for everyone else. Which, intellectually, I knew to be the case. But did not much care. By now I do not much care about the actual tests. Anymore than Marlou cares about her SAT scores.
The isolation of body parts reaches a new level after nightfall. This takes the form of Strauss' Salomé, on display at the San Francisco Opera. A friend had prepared me for some heavy going. Read my e-mail after you see it, she advised. It is, at least partly, a mess, she judged. Because it's an opera, a level of mess almost always exists. So what's to worry? I was prepared for one important aspect: no intermission. The thing cranks up and rolls along without interval. Fair warning for the bladder compromised. What the hell.
Who was John the Baptist? Mentally, reading the program's synopsis, I'm trying to get a handle on the characters and the plot. The house lights dim before I can make much progress, but if John was a Baptist, Bill a Presbyterian and Lewis a Rastafarian, and they ask the bartender for the same scotch.... Too late. The curtain is up, and why, no one can tell, since the cast all stand about waiting for the conductor to enter.
Things unfold. Why John is a Baptist is never revealed. There are some Jews, however, who stand about tugging on their phylacteries and engaging in pointless speculation about Elijah. Time passes. Salomé wants a little head. This used to be the stuff of naughty jokes. But Salomé wants the one currently attached to John's neck. She gets it, for reasons that are also not clear. She also goes to unmotivated lengths to fondle the head once detached. There is some rather splendid music in between. Surely not much of Oscar Wilde's famous one-act remains intact here. At least, that's my guess. I'll have to give it a read. Otherwise, there is simply no explaining this two-hour paean to morbid fear of female sexuality. I think I enjoyed the muscle test more. It's a relief to drive home.
